Venezuela: Mendelssohn and Hato Piñero Ranch

Venezuela News and Views ^ | Jan. 11, 2005 | Daniel Duquenal

[Kitten Festival]

I have been arranging my extensive CD collection which lead me to play some of those long forgotten CD. This afternoon it was Mendelssohn "Reformation" Symphony. This might not be the best symphony of this rather underrated composer. The 5th popularity has suffered from being a "heftier" work, more intellectual, less crafted and vital than the "Italian". As if trying to encompass the reformation movement in music were possible. Still, the last movement opening is one of the most stirring moments of the repertoire, and a powerful musical image of the liberation of the spirit, no matter what religious connotation is associated with.

I started to have the odd notion that it was rather subversive to play such a symphony in San Felipe. After all it was an ode by a man of Jewish origin to the most important religious reformation movement. For better or for worse, the rivalry between the two Christian creeds was going to be at the root of European technical and political superiority, even if the 30 Years War was a rather heavy price to pay. Not to mention what would happen to Jewry in Europe. But it must have been quite an intellectual effort for Mendelssohn to accept fully his German soul through the celebration of Luther's work. So many contradictions for the sake of civilization.

Because this is all what it is about, what civilization is. I do not know why but as I was listening again to it, I was recalling images of countryside Yaracuy chavistas herded in open air trucks to some political meeting. Some with bottles of booze in hand, most disheveled and not only by the wind. I wondered what was the equivalent scene in the late Weimar Germany.

[Kitten Festival]

Eloquent, wistful essay about the society that is disappearing in Venezuela, in the name of communism and collective farms. It' truly terrible what is happening there. And the media is asleep.